As per usual with first UV of season, some of this is a bit dated because of preview week.

I HAVE HEARD THE PEOPLE. I acknowledge that the people demand I eat a lemon. I will eat a lemon, because I guess I'd rather be the guy who eats a lemon on a technicality than doesn't eat a lemon on a technicality. I request that you, the people, acknowledge that my call that Desmond Morgan would be pushed out of Michigan's starting lineup appears to be a good call after he was probably Michigan's best LB in game one and led the team in tackles despite not technically starting. I plead nolo contendre to this lemon, basically.

The ND cheating thing: resolved? Well, first: the investigation's tentacles reached out and added safety Eilar Hardy to the Kendall Moore, KeiVarae Russell, Davaris Daniels, Ishaq Williams quartet. Message boards are naturally buzzing with rumors ranging from they're all done for the year to they're all back by Michigan. As of three days ago the investigation was "reportedly complete"—that's when Hardy got suspended.

Everyone involved here was supposed to be out the door when it happened. FWIW, I had a good source suggesting that was the case as well. I didn't mention it because when Bruce Feldman is reporting something piping up with a "me too" is some Darren Rovell business, but now that there's doubt about the final outcome here it seems pertinent.

If there are reinstatements that impact the Michigan game they're going to have to come quickly, what with most of these guys missing nearly a month of practice. As of today's ND presser there was no update. Could you insert these guys on one or two days of practice? (Friday is a walkthrough.) Getting late.

One guy who is out. Austin Collinsworth did something to a knee ligament, missed the Rice game, and is projected to miss the Michigan game. As of three days ago he was out two to four weeks and getting some of that horse placenta action:

“There's a chance we could have him for week three,” Kelly said. “He had a PRP [platelet-rich plasma] treatment on the weekend, so we'll see what happens."

Rice is a spread, so ND was in a nickel package most of that game. They brought in Elijah Shumate next to sophomore Max Redfield; Mattias Farley played nickel the whole way. Shumate busted on the Rice touchdown. Shumate was a touted recruit, as you might expect.

“This game was not what (Michigan) had shown all last year,” said Mountaineers coach Scott Satterfield. “Why they did that, I don’t know. … It was all game. Even the last drive, they were playing man.”

They did that because they had been doing it all offseason. I don't think it's unreasonable for you to read, like, one article about Michigan's defense this year.

Oh that makes more sense then. After Wisconsin finished gacking the game away to LSU, Badger head coach Gary Andersen said he "didn't know" why Melvin F-ing Gordon got three carries after a 63-yard romp in the second quarter. It turns out there is a reason for this other than Andersen being hypnotized by Les Miles's scary voodoo eyes:

Badgers coach Gary Andersen said on Monday that his junior running back suffered a hip flexor strain during the game. Gordon later told reporters that the injury occurred late in the second quarter. …

"I should have let them know, let Coach A know and stepped up and told them, 'Look I need to be in there," Gordon said, according to Fox Sports Wisconsin's Jesse Temple. "I put that on myself."

So that makes a little more sense. Also making more sense: Joel Stave's arm injury has caused Wisconsin to shut him down. He was not available to relieve the overwhelmed Tanner McEvoy. Cold comfort to Wisconsin fans today, though. Jamiemac has a breakdown of the game—Warren Herring going out was a huge problem.

Here's a breakdown of the Beilein offense. No doubt you will see this again as Ace goes over it in detail for you after his high school football responsibilities have been completed, but here's 15 minutes of John Beilein's offense categorized by play type:

Wildcats continue dropping like flies. Northwestern DT Sean McEvilly, he of the most disappointing name pronunciation in the league, is out for the year with a foot injury. This is a problem. You no doubt remember Michigan's offensive line looking functional against the Wildcats last year. Now take a starter off that line.

Also in personnel issues affecting distant games, Maryland loses receiver Levern Jacbos and some other guy. They are still set on receivers thank you.

McGary clarification. Many folks picked up on part of the McGary VICE interview in which he seems to say "so what, I committed a literally victimless non-crime" about his draconian NCAA suspension. This is a hot take even if it is a correct hot take. But he's really talking about people annoying him on social media:

"I still get people on Twitter and Instagram still commenting on stuff, saying, oh, you did drugs. Well, you know what, I did, whatever. So what? I learned from it. It was in college. They'll understand when they're in college."

He does say what he did was "the opposite of harming somebody" and "just don't get caught," which is a take hot enough for me.

Another nail in the already quite-nailed coffin. Patrick Omameh is probably going to be Tampa Bay's starting right guard this fall. So Michigan had a line with three NFL players on it in 2012 and Denard Robinson and couldn't run the ball except with Denard Robinson.

The second half is a haze of Michigan pushing their way back in miserably slow fashion. I spent much of it staring at the clock. I had no idea how many emotions were building until… Mike Hart gave Michigan a one-point lead with a remarkable, weaving touchdown run from around midfield with under five minutes left. One of my roommates, standing next to me, literally wept with a mixture of joy and relief.

(Jane: I had left the stadium by then. I couldn’t do it. I saw where this was going, and I strongly believed that if I went home and went to sleep, I would wake up and this would all be a horrific dream. As a small child, I used to have nightmares that a raptor dressed as a postal worker ate me while my parents stood and watched. I have significant experience in bad dreams. I watched the rest of the game on ESPN’s Gamecast.)

This is literally the only thing I have read about the 2007 game despite the entire universe breaking their longform budget to provide opportunities for me to do so.

Michigan power running game looks like glory days

Have we learned nothing from last year's "IT LOOKS LIKE ALABAMA!" quote from Gerry DiNardo?

One sign this may not be a very clued-in article: the repeated use of fictional house divided child "De'Veon Bell." Not that I wouldn't take De'Veon Bell on my team. That would be like trying to tackle a centaur.

Can somebody with a uniqname go to the Music Library and get them a better soundtrack?

From time to time people from the less-heralded sports/activities at Michigan provide detailed diaries of their teams and their exploits. Sometimes they actually succeed in making us turn our heads and get into something other than the big five of hoops, hockey, football, football (teams we play), and football (Penn State).

This week we witnessed the Other Sports Diary to End All Other Sports Diaries by Bronco648, a running, day-by-day recap of their week-long race with a national title on the line, kicked off with a entire media guide that includes photos/profiles of each team member. Example:

Feight was raised by a family of wild Spartans then imprisoned by a mad skiing coach before discovering his mutant meteorological powers could help him escape to Ann Arbor.

It's like NASCAR except with clean energy and electrical engineering and a team meteorologist, so of course Michigan is awesome at it. The car's name is Quantum (who voted against Dilithium?) and it built a strong lead in the early going before the team got caught using Denard Robinson's smile to boost the radiant flux, a 90-minute penalty. To discover the ending, read the thing, or else find a freshman WLB or CRex family member to translate this for you:

2012 전국 챔피언을만 세!!!

Family members of CRex? Like another recent epic tale about a ring, the latest installment of CRex's great adventure begins with a flashback, where we discover how two Chinese gangsters and a deity named Guan Yu (go blue?) brought about the fall of the Sweatervest Lord. The action then shifts stateside, where Little Sister has gone from heartbreaking debutante to Warcraft addict to Marmot Rambo to Ricky Bobby in the span of two weeks. Q: How is it that vampires and obnoxious people from New Jersey have so many TV shows but this guy doesn't? A: Because CRex Family Hour's target audience would skip it anytime they can instead watch…

Footbawwwwwwww. Thank hart20 for diving into reams of stats to come back with data on how much production is returning from each of our opponents. Part the First puts all that data into tables that say things like 15 percent of MSU's receiving yards are returning, and 100% of Justin Siller isn't(!). Then the rubber hits the chart in Part II which you must read because we are going to quote from it all year. Sample? Sample.

II. Rushing Offense

The formula that I used to calculate the total returning percent for each team’s rushing offense was to give a 33.3% weight to each of returning carries, returning rushing yards, and returning rushing TDs.

Hart20 is your Diarist of the Week, plus 200 "Hero" points (I just made those up).

Great Scott, our freshmen are heavy. Just in before press time, LSAClassof2000 has put the weights and heights of Big Ten players into a spreadsheet. Included is a comparison of our freshmen versus the conference's mean, where we find our WRs, TEs, DTs, DEs, and DBs are already larger than the average B1G (which averages presumably include walk-ons). MSU is the heaviest in our division by a large (ha!) margin; Nebraska is the shortest, though they rate highest in the conference in returning rushing punch, which was quite the punch.

Quite the punch? Then why do I remember it more like an 8-year-old girl? Well, sonny, you just sit down right there and let Uncle BlueSeoul tell you about the greatest all-around performance by Michigan since 1997 Penn State. It (the diary) got bumped, and not just because somebody whose name rhymes with "Eyeco" left a pic of Urban Meyer bicep flexing on top of the front page all weekend. Actually these always get bumped, but you may not remember that because BlueSeoul hadn't done a GW(WPs!) since the middle of last season. The most anticipated MGoArticle you'd completely given up on not named "Upon Further Review: Virginia Tech" is finally available. And yes, m'boy, a man DID once force a pitch from the back side.

The difference really highlights the regional strength of the South. Whereas Michigan recruits a bunch of guys from really close by and then a bunch of guys from all over the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex, Alabama's players are primarily regional. If the mass you see at about 230 miles from Tuscaloosa is Atlanta and Mobile, and the cluster 200 miles from Ann Arbor is W-Mich and the Ohioans, then the big difference between us and them is their Floridians (cluster around 600 mark) are closer to home than ours (1200 to 1300 cluster).

Football (Penn State). NCAA's nuclear bunker-buster fell upon Happy Beaver State College Valley Whatever this week. Fallout diaries include jmblue suggesting a realignment of Big~Ten divisions, a "don't you get it?" message to PSU fans that probably qualifies under the definition of rant, and oakapple describes the path that will lead the nittany lion-beavers back to five/six stars of program strength.

Etc. Michigan Stadium brought to you by McDonArby's Dunkin' Save Mart Lanes and Shredder. Brian is entranced by David Brandon playing golf. Blazefire puts the 2012 season and Jerry Sandusky to Hotel California, though not sure I liked the result. The Blockhams visit football's Valhalla. This is one of my favorites so far, though I waited in vain for Fielding Yost to tap Bo on the shoulder and (with Bob Ufer standing behind him), say "you still haven't thanked me for AC and Indiana!"

Michigan was always up there with schools like USC and Penn State (though I hate mentioning anything PSU now) as being football uniforms you don't screw with.

I know this is a fad in college football that I'm just going to have to get used to. But I always liked the whole, "If it's not broke, don't fix it," thing.

Fonts are Akka, Flynn, SuperMario256, and Shrek; if you don't get some of these references that's because a future created only lasts as long as the marketing campaign for it. If that is Gardner (can anyone tell?) in the video, it's at least no more ridiculous than the show he put on in the last ones.

Pre-Gaming With guy is shooting at 1p.m. on Sunday on the Diag if you want to be in the "I Love You Denard" music video. I do not believe he is accepting lyric suggestions.

Your moment of zen:

Yay ticket arrivals! If you're signed up to get the emails/texts/FB/twitter from MGoBlue, you can order individual tickets for AF/UMass/NW/Iowa ($75 each), plus the UMass family pack thing, starting about 8:30 this morning.

Got that all out of your system? Okay here's your blogger back; remind him he still needs to pick up dog food.

Hey. So you can wade through all of that, or just visit RationalMSUfan's thoughts and the ensuing comments. There's two points of derp in there (he mistakes four flagrant personal fouls in a game for one, and believes Gardner should start). But give him some credit for coming here sane when his blogosphere looks like this------------(HT Mgrowold)-------------->

He followed Derp 1 with a good point: Dantonio probably didn't see more than the punch and the piling on; maybe he would have pulled him if he saw the arm-bar and the facemask twist too. He sat on the video for four days until the Big Ten issued a suspension so probably no.

Off the board things were a little more under control. Gonzoist jhackney thinks this kind of behavior is something to be proud of, yada yada dick in a mason jar, pass the asparagus.

Like junkies hooked on a drug, Michigan fans in withdrawal began lashing out with a bowie knife everywhere and on everyone. Some of the slashing was justified, but some was just pent up rage left over from three disappointing seasons previous.

Nonnair found MSU averages about five personal fouls, roughed passers or unsportsmanlike penalties in the three games MSU has played Michigan in East Lansing under Dantonio, before devolving into into an unfair comparison with Erickson-era Hurricanes.

I mean this with all possible double entendre: let's move on to…

Wife Week 2011

Do you think these uniforms make me look like a sell-out'? Cause I was going
for all like, 'lets get the team fired up!' -DB

With our D getting gashed recently by MSU the question has been asked “Why not play more 46?” In this diary I hope to go over the strengths, weaknesses and a little history of the Bear Defense.

JeepinBen is your diarist of the week for breaking down the forty-six. MichFan1997 has taken up the mantle of FEI projecting, but after three straight years of dropping way down in the Big Ten season I'm hesitant to believe Michigan's got the 17th best defense in the country just yet. THE_KNOWLEDGE has settled into a new role as kind of a predictions wrangler, like Moe but without the awesome free stuff. Of Logic, Chriseous Dangerous makes the latest picture pages move.

After the jump, the weeklies, the best of the board that wasn't about Gholston, and a six-part series on the Solar Team's bronze performance.

Cone deficiency. The news that Conelius Jones will not be with the program this fall is not exactly news today, but permit me a day to recover from my World Cup hangover. This is the reason:

According to Brown, Jones went through a rough stretch with personal issues over the winter. Although he graduated with the rest of his class and maintained a 2.5 grade-point average, the 6-foot-2, 190-pound Jones struggled with the SAT, which kept him from qualifying.

That must have been a rough stretch with grades almost at rock bottom, since Jones claimed he had a 3.7 GPA and offers from Wake Forest, Duke, and Stanford when he committed to Michigan. A decline that steep probably means the initial GPA report was a bit inflated.

Unlike Dorsey and his immediate enrollment at Louisville, Jones will head to Fork Union in an effort to get qualified, at which point he'd come in as a mid-year enrollee. This means he's honestly just a hair away from qualifying—the NCAA severely restricted how much grade magic prep schools could work a couple of years ago—and has a decent chance of getting in in January. Michigan has taken kids from prep schools, although not particularly successfully: Marques Slocum spent a semester at Milford and Arizona CB Quinton McCoy spent a prep year before ending up on campus. Neither lasted two years.

As far as the 2010 team goes, Jones's absence creates a distressing lack of Cone in the hairy depths of the quarterback depth chart, and that's about all.

I don't think Dorsey's situation is at all related to Jones and Kinard. Dorsey was qualified; the other two guys are headed to prep school. That doesn't have anything to do with hypothetical anti-Rodriguez forces executing their dastardly master plan. And even if the academic side of things is cracking down, they have a very good reason to do so: Michigan's latest transfer-saddled APR score is ugly, and Michigan is going to have to put up a major improvement lest they fall below the 925 line of doom.

Meanwhile, the other blame meme floating around is that Rodriguez is bringing in a lot more kids at academic risk. That may or may not be true but unless Jones's transcripts and offers were just totally fictional this doesn't seem like an example. It's one thing to take a guy who has a lot of work to do, and another to take a guy well above the minimums only to watch him collapse.

What happened with Cissoko? In other happy news about never-were kids, Boubacar Cissoko pled guilty to four separate counts of robbery and faces sentencing that won't be 45 years but hypothetically could. The News takes an in-depth look at what happened to a high school kid no one thought would have problems until he got out of this protected environment:

He was intentionally protected, growing up on Rosa Parks Boulevard in Detroit, a neighborhood that was rough-and-tough 40 years before Cissoko got there.

"He came from a sheltered background," Willis said. "By 10:30 he was in, home. He was driven to school, driven home. We are a close-knit family, we were tight on him."

Even the history of the riots which began along what was then known as 12th Street was kept from Cissoko, by the family.

"He's a good kid," Willis said. "When he left, he was praying five times a day."

Isn't there a show about Amish kids who head out into the world for a year or two and go totally nuts? In this case it seems that protecting Cissoko from negative influences left him unprepared to deal with them. He was unvaccinated. Bonus points to the News for deploying one of those beautifully dry newspaper sentences that radiate detached authority:

Less than worldly, he was suddenly thrust into a scene in Ann Arbor in which young adults believe they have achieved a level of sophistication that they may well never attain in life.

Oh, snap.

Another oddity: court documents show Cissoko's age is actually two years older than Michigan (and Cass Tech) listed him, which might explain why he didn't live up to the recruiting hype.

Burn the regionals down. It takes some doing to make me livid about something that won't happen until 2012 and involves a committee making a decision, but holy aarrgh I want to punch a wall:

First, the announcing of four more regionals means we won't be seeing the slightly less moronic proposed tournament format, which at least included one playoff round that made some sense.

The second problem is the hosts themselves. The hosts will be Minnesota, Michigan Tech, Holy Cross, and Fairfield/Yale. If it feels like a repeat, it's because it pretty much is. The two eastern ones aren't that big of a deal. They're sure to be boring, empty arenas for critically important games, but there aren't really any better options. Plus, with now-defunct Fairfield helping host in Bridgeport, you get the joy of the 17 people in attendance saying, "What the hell is that deer doing in here?"

Tech is hosting in Green Bay, which is WCHA territory. This will be the fourth consecutive year that Minnesota hosts something. They were awarded regionals in 2009 and 2010, get the Frozen Four in 2011, and now have another regional in 2012. WCH points out that over that time span the entire CCHA gets to host three events.

It is ludicrous that the next two years will see zero regionals in CCHA territory. I hope the St. Louis regional is attended by five people. Are any CCHA teams even bidding for these things? Why hasn't Michigan put in a bid using the new rink in Toledo? I'm not sure where the breakdown is, but something's got to change.

It's a big deal. From the looks of it, it's about three times as big a deal as the World Cup. This is Michigan's third straight national title. Seriously: Directors Cup this event, yo.

An actual loss on the tubes.EDSBS found 40 minutes of youtubery not posted by WolverineHistorian. It's the 1988 Michigan-Miami game that Michigan ended up losing 31-30. Though it is depressing, the pants are very tight and Al Trautwig's doing his very best Data impression:

Draft disappointment. We knew that Michigan's 2010 hockey class had collectively slipped in the eyes of NHL evaluators, but the extent to which they did still surprises:

Jon Merrill fell into the early second round, going #38 to New Jersey.

Alex Guptill went in the third round to Dallas.

Luke Moffatt and Lee Moffie were both seventh-rounders.

Clare, Fallon, and Deblois did not go.

That's disappointing from a talent standpoint. At least Merrill and Guptill went to generally patient, NCAA-friendly organizations. Michigan might get an extra year out of Merrill and stands a good chance of hanging on to Guptill.

More yes, please. Given the current state of college football scheduling, where you have to have one real nonconference game and then you can schedule anything that will show up at your stadium down to the Albanian cricket circus, I've been in favor of expanding the conference schedule for years. So Adam Rittenberg's post on the possibility comes with some welcome quotes:

There are certainly pros and cons to increasing the number of league games, and Big Ten athletic directors expect to debate them in August during their next scheduled meeting in Chicago.

"Unless you’re really hot, fans are finding that some of the preseason games, they just don’t appreciate," Purdue athletic director Morgan Burke said. "They’d rather see you play every Big Ten opponent. If you went to nine games, you’d be bringing in one more Big Ten opponent, which would make your season-ticket package more attractive."

By radically increasing the amount of money people are expected to play with PSLs and mandatory donations and whatnot, schools have increased the pressure to have home schedules actually worth buying. Burke's actually in favor of ten(!) conference games, which will never happen.

The article also quotes Barry Alvarez in support and we know that Michigan has been pushing for more conference games for a few years now, so there's at least some chance the league will add another game. Another bonus of the extra conference game: if the Big Ten does go away from pure geography and creates a division that's Michigan-OSU-Alamo Party*, additional conference games will reduce the impact of any disparity. It also makes cross-division protected games (which I don't like) less necessary since you'll be playing two-thirds of the opposite division instead of half.

*(Which seems to have something of a consensus building around it. TOC threw in the towel, and once the blogs are united nothing can stand against them. If Penn State had a vote that might be a problem, but lol Penn State suffrage.)

If NASCAR counts as a sport… then solar car competitions, where you actually build the thing yourself, is like a double sport. Also Michigan's solar car team is consistently awesome. They're running the American Solar Challenge right now and, though it's fuzzy if they're actually winning, they think they're doing well:

After being tight with Minnesota this morning and afternoon, they had to pull off the road for what is rumored to be battery problems. We don't know the current location of any other teams, but we believe we are at least 15 minutes ahead of everyone but Stanford.

That was yesterday. They learned last night that Minnesota is now 40 minutes back and Missouri S&T, which is apparently big in solar cars, is 10 minutes back. The previous stage saw Infinium finish almost an hour in front of their nearest challenger. We should totally try to get this thing in the Director's Cup.

Goodbye, almost everyone. One of the tangential discussions that's entered the public consciousness after the QC/stretching violations at Michigan is "dang, there are a lot of dudes getting paid to not coach football." The NCAA is within its rights to reel these guys in somewhat, but this seems drastic:

Back in April when the Athletics Personnel and Recruiting Cabinet began seriously discussing legislation to curb the growing football and basketball staffs, there were two big questions: exactly how many noncoaching staff members would the teams be allowed and how would the legislation deal with attempts to build new offices in the athletic department?

The cabinet gave an emphatic answer to the former question, with a somewhat weaker answer to the latter. Bowl Subdivision Football would be limited to just four noncoaching staff members, while men’s and women’s basketball would be reduced to just one. In the Football Championship Subdivision, the limit would be two.

That's not four grad assistants, it's four staff members, period. The Bylaw Blog suggests this would see athletic departments devolve the many other roles undertaken by specific sport-specific staff into department-wide organizations that avoid this new regulation. The money is always going to flow somewhere. At some point the NCAA should get serious about booting I-A teams that can't manage 20,000 paid attendance per game into I-AA. The real problem here is that teams like Michigan and Eastern Michigan are being addressed by the same sets of laws when they have zero resemblance to each other.

Wangler to Carter. Hello Heisman. Bo singing the Victors. In your expert opinion, what is the single most iconic video clip of Michigan football? There have been many, many memorable moments over the years. But I think Wangler to Carter from Homecoming 1979 is probably the most iconic video clip of Michigan football. I was born 4 months after that game was played so I obviously have no personal memories of it. But the video speaks for itself. One last play, Carter dancing into the end zone, the crowd going insane, Bo jumping up and down, Bob Ufer screaming, “Oh my GOD!!! Carter scored!!!” and Lee Corso having a stroke on the Indiana sideline.

Given the vast breadth of WH's tape collection, I would have ballparked his date of birth sometime around 1817. Instead he is younger than me.

Merrill watch. Not in the scary way. The first round of the NHL draft is tonight and should see defenseman Jon Merrill taken. There will also be a goalie taken, and this will be lame. But back to Merrill:

"I honestly want to get drafted, but it's not that big of a deal," Merrill said in a phone interview Tuesday. "It's tough not to hear about (mock drafts) or see things, but I really don't care that much about it.

"First pick or the last pick, you have the same opportunity to play in the NHL."

For the paranoid, there's no hint in of a Merrill defection anywhere in the article. The remainder of the draft will be more interesting as far as the composition of the team goes: CCHL forward Alex Guptill is eligible and has made some comments about deciding what he wants to do after he talks with the team who drafts him. He could spend a year in the USHL, possibly with fellow 2011 commit Lucas Lessio, or defect if the Kings or some other team run by paleolithic folk grabs him. He should go somewhere in the middle rounds.

The final word on SEC vs Big Ten. Sure, they may have won a zillion national titles but this is the Big Ten's position on vuvuzelas:

The Big Ten has specific policies that do not allow irritants or noisemakers, so vuvuzelas would not be allowed. Below is the specific language from our football game management manual.

This instrument, no matter how irritating to some, will not be banned from SEC games this upcoming season, according to the SEC. The instrument of choice in South Africa, which may or may not catch on here in the states, can be brought into stadiums across the league.

Big Ten wins forever. Not that I imagine there will be a ton of vuvuzelas at SEC games. There will be three incidents where vuvuzelas are brought into the stadium, then gingerly extracted from parts of the anatomy plastic horns were not meant to tread, before everyone gets the idea.

One of the hard things about forming an outlook on the World Cup is that when an event gets this much attention, the flow of commentary is so fast and broad that every possible angle is exhausted and trivial positions develop a kind of insubstantial politics. Conventional wisdom starts to seem like an ideology, and if you’re not careful, your own feelings about what happens will be dictated by where you want to stand in relation to that ideology rather than by what you actually think. There’s a pundit position, a cognoscenti backlash, an uber-cognoscenti counter-backlash, and so on till after midnight. Your heart and the stadium get farther and farther apart.

Case in point: two opinions that put you on roughly the same line of anti-pundit knowingness would be “the first round of games was actually great” and “Switzerland weren’t that exciting yesterday; Spain were just terrible.” Maybe you really feel those things, or have numbers to back them up. But in most cases, I’d guess that the attraction of these stances has a lot to do with the fact that they put some space between you and the thousand-mile pandemonium of cliches blasting out of the TV studios and the pages of your favorite newspaper. It’s not only that they make you sound like you know what you’re talking about, although there’s no discounting the lure of savvy disaffectedness. They also just turn down the volume.

That sort of contrarianism for the sake of saying something new is a constant temptation for anyone tasked with writing something people will find interesting. Sometimes it's right. Sometimes it's David Berri running a regression and declaring Dennis Rodman more valuable than Michael Jordan or that NBA coaches don't understand who their best players are. If you're trying to combat the conventional wisdom, you should regard it a tricky, wily foe that requires something more than a blunt-force blow.